This invention relates to disk players, and more particularly to a front loading disk player with disk conveying mechanism for automatically conveying a disk to a disk playing position.
A front loading disk player is well known in the art in which an audio disk having acoustic grooves on its surface or a digital audio disk on which PCM signals have been recorded is placed on a carrier, which is movable into and out of the player housing, and taken in its entirety in the player housing so that the upper surface of the disk player may be freely utilized, for instance, for supporting objects.
A front loading disk player of this type which is provided with carrier taking in and out means for automatically moving the carrier out of and into the player housing to simplify a disk loading and unloading operation has been proposed in the art. In the disk player, the disk placed on the carrier outside the player housing is moved in two directions, horizontal and vertical directions, to position it at its playing position, i.e., over the turn table. For this purpose, heretofore the carrier is made up of two bearing members: a tray which can reciprocate horizontally of the player housing, and a container which can reciprocate vertically of the tray, and which can go out of the player housing together with the tray and support the disk in cooperation with the tray.
In the operation of the conventional front loading disk player thus constructed, the tray together with the container is moved horizontally into the player housing so as to be fixed to the player housing, and then only the container is moved vertically so that the disk is transferred to the turn table from the container. For this operation, the disk player is provided with an intricate operation switching mechanism for switching the operations of the tray and the container. Furthermore, as was described above, the carrier comprises the two parts, the tray and the container. Therefore, the disk player is, as a whole, large in the number of components and high in manufacturing cost.
On the other hand, the disk player is provided with a door for closing an opening in the player housing through which the carrier is taken out of the housing, so that the carrier is moved into and out of the player housing while rubbing the door, thus producing abnormal sounds.